1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to synthesis of biopolymers on a solid support surface, and analysis by hybridization reaction.
2. Description of Related Art
Biopolymers synthesis has been widely practiced by using solid phase substrates. One form of biopolymer synthesis is the synthesis of deoxyribonucleic acid ("DNA") which can be performed on a particulate solid phase support in a reaction column. The process can be automated in which the relevant reagents are delivered to the reaction column under the control of a microprocessor. An example of such automated DNA synthesis instrument is the Oligo 1000 DNA Synthesizer developed and sold by Beckman Instruments, Inc. A description of this instrument may be found in copending U.S. Pat. application Ser. Nos. 07/936,976 and 07/909,232 which have been assigned to the assignee of the present application. The synthesized DNA strand is cleaved from the solid support in the column and collected for further processing or use.
DNA synthesis has also been performed using a flat sheet of solid phase support material. In international patent publication No. WO 89/10977, it disclosed that DNA can be synthesized onto a glass slide to form a structured one-dimensional matrix or array of polynucleotides. The synthesized material is left attached to the glass slide which is then applied in a hybridization reaction process for sequence analysis of unknown polynucleotide sequences. The process and apparatus disclosed require extensive manual steps.